What do you know about the longest international border in the world?

I know we all had geography in our schools, but there are some thing you cannot find in school books. I accidentally came across this topic and wanted to found out a bit more about it. The U.S. is third biggest country in the world and it has one of the longest borders in the world.

Let me tell you about the international border between Canada and the U.S. It is the longest border between two states in the world with 5,525 miles long (about 8891 km). It overlaps with 49^th parallel north, but it is NOT straight as it should have been. Cartographers drew a straight line on the map, but the engineers built it zigzag, unintentionally of course. It was the 19^th century so the only equipment engineers had was a compass and a ball of string. They built 900 monuments along the straight part of the border, and about 8,000 monuments in total. Due to several treaties over the years and in order to solve animosity caused by following the watershed as border between these two states, both countries agreed on simpler solution: 49^th parallel. U.S. gained more territory than Canada in this last treaty that shaped the border.

“Don’t touch me”, said Canada. “I won’t”, said the U.S. So, they moved 20 feet apart.

They did exactly what is stated in this sentence creating a 20 feet (approximately 6 meters) of deforested straight line that follows the entire length of the border (known as “no-touching zone”). There are no trees in this zone, and the new ones that start to grow are immediately cut off.  There are also some unsolved territory issues, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. Canada and the U.S. both claim that these specific islands are part of their territory and can’t really solve this problem, but luckily this doesn't  cause big problems so far.

This straight border caused more problems as it was moving westward. For instance, on the western coast in the Washington state Point Roberts is not connected with the U.S. as there is a border and Canadian territory between them. This area is home to thousands Americans, but has only primary schools. Needless to say, students must cross a border few times a day to get to their high school.

I highly recommend to see this video, it is amazing: 

This is an interesting link I found about fascinating borders in the world: http://www.buzzfeed.com/austinhunt/22-eye-opening-international-borders-from-around-the-world#.cpJV3n7oM

All in all, it is a very long border and there are some problems that will hopefully be solved in the future. I hop you enjoyed this post.